In an interview published on 22 September 2000, the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung invited Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to respond to the principal
objections raised against the Declaration Dominus Iesus. Even if
the questions and answers reflect the German context, the text of the
interview offers sound explanations that are also applicable and useful
outside this context. The daily edition of L'Osservatore Romano
therefore published an Italian translation of the interview, omitting
the parts that only concern the German situation. Here is a translation
of the Italian version of the interview.

Your Eminence, you head a structure in which "thereare
tendencies to ideologization and to an excessive penetration of foreign
and fundamentalistelements of faith". The reprimandwas
containedin a communication publishedlast week by the
German section of the European Society for Catholic Theology.

I must confess that I am very annoyed by this kind of statement. For
some time now I have known by heart this vocabulary, in which the
concepts of fundamentalism, Roman centralism and absolutism are never
missing. I could formulate certain statements on my own without even
waiting to receive them, because they are repeated time and again,
regardless of the subject treated.

I wonder why they never think up anything new.

Are you saying that criticism is false because it is repeated too
often?

No. It is only that this type of predefined criticism fails to
address the various topics.

Some proffer new criticism with the greatest of ease, because they
consider everything that comes out of Rome in the light of politics and
the division of power, and do not tackle the content.

Indeed the content is somewhat explosive. Is it really
surprising that a document in which it is claimed that Christianity is
the sole repository of truth and the ecclesial status of Anglicans and
Protestants is not acknowledged should encounter such opposition?

I would like first of all to express my sadness and disappointment at
the fact that public reaction, with a few praiseworthy exceptions, has
completely disregarded the Declaration's true theme. The document begins
with the words "Dominus Iesus"; this is the brief
formula of faith contained in the First Letter to the Corinthians
(12:3), in which Paul has summarized the essence of Christianity: Jesus
is Lord.

With this Declaration, whose writing he followed stage by stage with
great attention, the Pope wanted to offer the world a great and solemn
recognition of Jesus Christ as Lord at the height of the Holy Year, thus
bringing what is essential firmly to the centre of this occasion which
is always prone to externalism.

The widespread resentment precisely concerns this
"firmness". At the peak of the Holy Year, would it not have
been more appropriate to send a signal to the other religions rather
than setting about confirming one's own faith?

At the beginning of this millennium we find ourselves in a situation
similar to that described by John at the end of the sixth chapter of his
Gospel: Jesus had clearly explained his divine nature in the institution
of the Eucharist. In verse 66 we read "After this, many of his
disciples drew back and no longer went about with him". In general
discussions today, faith in Christ risks being smoothed over and lost in
chatter. With this document, the Holy Father, as Successor of the
Apostle Peter, meant to say: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have
the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know,
that you are the Holy One of God" (Jn 6:68ff.). The document is
intended as an invitation to all Christians to open themselves anew to
the recognition of Jesus Christ as Lord, and thus to give a profound
meaning to the Holy Year. I was pleased that Mr Kock, President of the
Protestant Churches of Germany, recognized this important element in the
text in his reaction, which was moreover very dignified, and compared it
to the Barmen Declaration of 1934, in which the recently founded
Bekennende Kirche rejected the Church of the Reich founded by Hitler.
Prof. Jüngel of Tübingen also found in this text—despite his
reservations about the ecclesiological section—an apostolic spirit
similar to that of the Barmen Declaration. In addition, the Primate of
the Anglican Church, Archbishop Carey, expressed his grateful and
decided support of the true theme of the Declaration. Why, on the other
hand, do the majority of commentators disregard it? I would be glad to
have an answer.

The explosive element of a political-ecclesiastical nature is
contained in the section of the document concerning ecumenism. With
regard to the evangelical section, Eberhard Jüngel made a statement,
asserting that the document ignores the fact that all the Churches
"in their own way" want to be what in fact they are: "one
holy, catholic and apostolic Church". So is the Catholic Church
deceiving herself by claiming to have the exclusive right, since,
according to Jüngel, she shares these rights with the other Churches?

The ecclesiological and ecumenical issues of which everyone is now
speaking occupy only a small part of the document, which it seemed to us
necessary to write in order to emphasize Christ's living and concrete
presence in history. I am surprised that Jüngel should say that the one
holy, catholic and apostolic Church is present in all the Churches in
their own way and that (if I have understood correctly) he thus
considers the matter of the Church's unity to have been resolved. Yet
these numerous "Churches" contradict one another! Ifthey
are all Churches "in their own way", then this Church is a
collection of contradictions and cannot offer people clear direction.

But does an effective impossibility also stem from this normative
impossibility?

That all the existing ecclesial communities should appeal to the same
concept of Church seems to me to be contrary to their self-awareness.
Luther claimed that the Church, in a theological and spiritual sense,
could not be embodied in the great institutional structure of the
Catholic Church, which he regarded instead as an instrument of the
Antichrist. In his view, the Church was present wherever the Word was
proclaimed correctly and the sacraments administered in the right way.
Luther himself held that it was impossible to consider the local
Churches subject to the princes as the Church; they were external
institutions for assistance and were certainly necessary, but not the
Church in the theological sense. And who would say today that structures
which came into being by historical accident like, for example, the
Churches of Hesse-Waldeck and Schaumburg-Lippe, are Churches in the same
way that the Catholic Church claims to be? It is clear that the Union of
German Lutheran Churches (VELDK) and the Union of Protestant Churches in
Germany (EKD) do not want to be the "Church". A realistic
examination shows that the reality of the Church for Protestants lies
elsewhere and not in those institutions which are called regional
Churches. This should have been discussed.

The fact is that the Evangelical side now considers the definition
"ecclesial community" an offence. The harsh reactions to your
document are clear proof of this.

I find the claim of our Lutheran friends frankly absurd, i.e., that
we are to consider these structures resulting from chance historical
events as the Church in the same way that we believe the Catholic
Church, founded on the apostolic succession in the Episcopate, is the
Church. It would be more correct for our Evangelical friends to tell us
that for them the Church is something different a more dynamic reality
and not so institutionalized, or part of the apostolic succession. The
question then is not whether the existing Churches are all Churches in
the same way, which is obviously not the case, but in what does the
Church consist or not consist. In this sense, we offend no one by saying
that the actual Evangelical structures are not the Church in the sense
in which the Catholic Church intends to be so. They themselves have no
wish to be so.

Was this question addressed by the Second Vatican Council?

The Second Vatican Council tried to accept this different way of
determining the locus of the Church by stating that the Evangelical
Churches are not actually Churches in the same way that the Catholic
Church claims to be so, but that "elements of salvation and
truth" are found in them. It might be that the term
"elements" was not the best choice. In any case, its sense was
to indicate an ecclesiological vision in which the Church does not exist
in structures but in the event of preaching and the administration of
the sacraments. The way in which the dispute is now being conducted is
certainly wrong. I wish there had been no need to explain that the
Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has merely
taken up the Council's texts and the postconciliar documents, neither
adding nor removing anything.

On the other hand, Eberhard Jüngel sees something different there.
The fact that in its time the Second Vatican Council did not
state that the one and only Church of Christ is exclusively the Roman
Catholic Church perplexes Jüngel. In the Constitution Lumen gentium,it says only that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic
Church, which is governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops
in communion with him", not expressing any exclusivity with the
Latin word "subsistit".

Unfortunately once again I cannot follow the reasoning of my esteemed
colleague, Jüngel. I was there at the Second Vatican Council when the
term "subsistit" was chosen and I can say I know it well.
Regrettably one cannot go into details in an interview. In his
Encyclical Pius XII said: the Roman Catholic Church "is" the
one Church of Jesus Christ. This seems to express a complete identity,
which is why there was no Church outside the Catholic community.
However, this is not the case: according to Catholic teaching, which
Pius XII obviously also shared, the local Churches of the Eastern Church
separated from Rome are authentic local Churches; the communities that
sprang from the Reformation are constituted differently, as I just said.
In these the Church exists at the moment when the event takes place.

But should we not say then: a single Church does not exist. She is
divided into numerous fragments?

In fact, many of our contemporaries consider her such. Only fragments
of the Church are said to exist, and the best of the various pieces
should be sought. But if this were so, subjectivism would be warranted:
then everyone would invent his own Christianity and in the end his
personal taste would, be decisive.

Perhaps the Christian actually has the freedom to interpret this
"patchwork" also as subjectivism or individualism.

The Catholic Church, like the Orthodox Church, is convinced that a
definition of this kind is irreconcilable with Christ's promise and with
fidelity to him. Christ's Church truly exists and not in pieces. She is
not an unattainable utopia but a concrete reality. The "subsistit"
means precisely this: the Lord guarantees the Church's existence despite
all our errors and sins, which certainly are also clearly found in her.
With "subsistit", the intention was to say that, although the
Lord keeps his promise, there is also an ecclesial reality outside the
Catholic community, and it is precisely this contradiction which is the
strongest incentive to pursue unity. If the Council had merely wished to
say that the Church of Jesus Christ is also in the Catholic Church, it
would have said something banal. The Council would have clearly
contradicted the entire history of the Church's faith, which no Council
Father had in mind.

Jüngel's arguments are philological and in this regard he claims
that the interpretation of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, which you have just explained, is "misleading". In
fact, according to the terminology of the ancient Church, the one divine
being also "subsists", and not in one person alone but
in three. The following question arises from this reflection: If,
therefore, God himself "subsists" in the difference between
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and yet is not separated from himself ,
thus creating three reciprocal othernesses, why should this not also
apply to the Church, which represents the "mysterium trinitatis"in the world?

I am saddened to have to disagree again with Jüngel. First of all,
it is necessary to observe that the Church of the West, in her
translation of the Trinitarian formula into Latin, did not directly
adopt the Eastern formula, in which God is a being in three hypostases
("subsistences"), but translated the word hypostasis with the
term "person", since in Latin the word "subsistence"
as such did not exist and would therefore not have been adequate to
express the unity and difference between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

However, I am particularly determined to oppose this increasingly
widespread tendency to transfer the Trinitarian mystery directly to the
Church. It is not suitable. In this way we will end up believing in
three divinities.

In short, why cannot the "otherness" of the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit be compared to the diversity of ecclesial
communities? Is Jüngel's not a fascinating and harmonious formula?

Among the ecclesial communities there are many disagreements, and
what disagreements! The three "persons" constitute one God in
an authentic and supreme unity. When the Council Fathers replaced the
word "is" with the word "subsistit", they did so for
a very precise reason. The concept expressed by "is" (to be)
is far broader than that expressed by "to subsist". "To
subsist" is a very precise way of being, that is, to be as a
subject which exists in itself. Thus the Council Fathers meant to say
that the being of the Church as such is a broader entity than the Roman
Catholic Church, but within the latter it acquires, in an incomparable
way, the character of a true and proper subject.

Let us go back a step. One is struck by the curious semantics which
are sometimes found in Church documents. You yourself have pointed out
that the expression "elements of truth", which is central in
the current dispute, is somewhat infelicitous. Might not the expression
"elements of truth" betray a sort of chemical concept of
truth? The truth as a recurrent system of elements? Or: is there
not something overbearing about the idea of being able to separate truth
from falsehood or from partial truth through theorems, since certain
theorems claim to reduce the complex reality of God to a pattern drawn
with a compass?

The Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Church speaks of
"many elements of sanctification and of truth" that are found
outside the visible structure of the Church (n. 8); the Decree on
Ecumenism lists some of them: "The written word of God, the life of
grace, faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the
Holy Spirit and visible elements" (n, 3). A better term than
"elements" might exist, but its real meaning is clear: the
life of faith that the Church serves is a multifaceted structure and
various elements can be distinguished inside or outside it.

Nevertheless, is it not surprising that there should be a desire to
make a phenomenon that escapes empirical verification, such as religious
faith, intelligible through theorems?

With regard to faith and to making it understandable through
theorems, dogma is distorted if it is regarded as a collection of
theorems: the content of faith is expressed in its profession, whose
privileged moment occurs in the administration of the sacrament of
Baptism and is thus part of an existential process. It is the expression
of a new direction in life, but one which we do not give ourselves but
receive as a gift. This new direction to our life also implies that we
emerge from our ego and selfishness and enter that community of the
faithful which is called the Church. The focal point of the baptismal
formula is the recognition of the Trinitarian God. All subsequent dogmas
are no more than explications of this profession and ensure that its
fundamental orientation, the gift of self to the living God, remains
unaltered. Only when dogma is interpreted in this way can it be properly
understood.

Does this mean that from this spiritual perspective one can no longer
arrive at the content of faith?

No, the certitude of the Christian faith has its own content. It is
not an immersion in an inexpressible mystical dimension in which one
never comes to the content. The God in whom Christians believe has shown
us his face and heart in Jesus Christ: he has revealed himself to us. As
St Paul said, this concreteness of God was a scandal to the Greeks in
the past and, of course, still is today. This is inevitable.

One is struck by the ease with which precisely in Church circles
people tend to appear "injured" or "full of
suffering" regarding definitions of the faith which emphasize
content rather than form. How do you explain this moralization of the
intellectual clash, which now seems a constant for theologians?

It is not only a moralization but also a politicization: the
Magisterium is considered to be a power that should be countered with
another power. In the last century Ignaz Döllinger had already
expressed the idea that the Church's Magisterium should be opposed by
public opinion and that theologians should play a decisive role in this.
However, believers at the time rejected Döllinger's positions en
masse and supported the First Vatican Council. I maintain thatthe
harshness of certain reactions is also explained by the fact that
theologians may feel that their academic freedom is threatened and wish
to intervene in defence of their intellectual mission. Naturally, a
decisive role is also played by the climate fostered by secular culture,
which is more compatible with Protestantism than with the Catholic
Church.

I detect a certain irony when you speak of the intellectual mission
of theologians. And so what about the academic freedom of Catholic
theologians? Might not insistence on the ecclesial nature of theology
that is faithful to doctrine be a kind of conditioning? And often is
there not a lack of transparency in granting the permission to teach
Church doctrine (the nihil obstat)?

For theology, conformity with the Church's faith does not mean
submitting to conditions that are foreign to theology. By its nature,
theology seeks to understand the Church's faith, which is the
presupposition of its existence. In certain cases, moreover, Evangelical
Church leaders have had to deprive academics of their mission to teach,
because they had abandoned the foundations of this mission. As for us
and the nihil obstat, we must first remember that no one has a
right to a teaching post. Faculties of theology are not obliged to
communicate to individual candidates the reason why they were not chosen
or what prompted their decision. We communicate to our Bishops the
reason why, in our opinion, the nihil obstat cannot be granted to
a certain candidate. How to inform him of this is then up to the Bishop.
In a certain number of cases a correspondence was begun with the
candidates, whose explanations often made it possible to change the
decision from negative to positive.

Peter Hünermann's criticism centres on the following: by reinforcing
the obligation to take an oath of fidelity, theologians and clergy are
also required to hold as valid teachings that are only indirectly
connected with the truth of revealed faith but not explicitly revealed.

I have already addressed in detail the false information on this in
my two articles in Stimmen der Zeit in 1999 and in my
contribution to Wolfgang Beinert's book, published that same year, Gott
- ratlos vor demBösen?,so I will be brief.
Hünermann directs his criticism at the so-called second level of the
profession of faith, which distinguishes teaching that is valid and
indissolubly linked to Revelation from true and proper Revelation. It is
utterly false to say that the Fathers of the First and Second Vatican
Councils expressly rejected this distinction. On the contrary, precisely
the opposite is true. The concept of Revelation was re-elaborated at the
beginning of the modern era with the development of historical thought.
A distinction began to be made between what had been actually revealed
and what was derived from Revelation, without being separate from it or
directly contained in it. This historicization of the concept of
Revelation had never existed in the Middle Ages. The separation of the
two levels took conceptual form at the First Vatican Council through the
distinction made between "credenda" (to be believed) and
"tenenda" (to be held). Archbishop Pilarczyk of Cincinnati
recently explained this concept in the document Papers from the
Vallombrosa Meeting (2000). Moreover, it is enough to leaf through
any theology book from the pre-conciliar period to see that this is what
was precisely written, even if details in elaborating the second level
were debated and still are today. The Second Vatican Council naturally
accepted the distinction formulated by the First Vatican Council and
strengthened it. I fail to understand how one can assert the contrary.

The greatest criticism does not concern these distinctions so much as
the claim of the highest magisterial authority for teachings which have
only the status of "theologically well-founded", in which,
despite their good foundations, objections are still raised that have
never been completely eliminated.

Of course, with teachings to be held ("tenenda") something
more than "theologically well-founded" is meant; the latter
are changeable. The literature includes among these "tenenda"
important moral teachings of the Church (e.g., the rejection of
euthanasia and assisted suicide), so-called dogmatic facts (e.g., that
the Bishops of Rome are the Successors of St Peter, the legitimacy of
Ecumenical Councils, etc.).

Let us return again to your Congregation's disputed document. Rather
than being blamed for failing to emphasize content rather than form, the
Declaration Dominus Iesus is often accused of a somewhat tactless
approach that irritates the spokesmen of other religions and
denominations. Cardinal Sterzinsky of Berlin said that in theological
formation it is necessary not to forget in sermons the "when, where
and how". In Roman documents, however, it seems that this has been
forgotten. And Bishop Lehmann of Mainz said that he would have liked
"a text written in the style of the great conciliar texts",
and wonders to what extent the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith collaborated with other curial authorities in preparing the
document. In this connection, he mentions the Council for Interreligious
Dialogue and the Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

As for collaboration with the other curial authorities, the President
and Secretary of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal
Cassidy and Bishop Kasper, are members of our Congregation, as is the
President of the Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Arinze.
They all have a say in the matter, as I do. The Prefect, in fact, is
only the first among equals and is responsible for the orderly conduct
of the work. The three members of the Congregation I have just mentioned
took an active part in drafting the document, which was presented
several times at the ordinary meeting of the Cardinals and once at the
plenary meeting in which all our foreign members take part.
Unfortunately, Cardinal Cassidy and Bishop Kasper were prevented by
concurrent engagements from taking part in some of the sessions,
although they had been informed of the dates of these meetings well in
advance. Nevertheless, they received all the documentation and their
detailed written vota were communicated to the participants and
thoroughly discussed.

Did they get a hearing?

Almost all the proposals of the two persons in question were
accepted, because the opinion of the Council for Unity was naturally
very important for us in dealing with this matter. Moreover, I can
easily understand that the German Bishops are particularly sensitive to
difficulties arising from the situation in our country. But there is
also another side to the coin. Just recently, for example, on my way
home I met two men in their prime who came up to me and said:
"We're missionaries in Africa. How long we've waited for those
words! We're constantly meeting difficulties, and missionaries are
becoming fewer and fewer". I was deeply touched by the gratitude of
these two people, who are in the front lines of preaching the Gospel.
And this is only one of the many reactions of this kind. The truth is
always disturbing and never easy. Jesus' words are often terribly hard
and expressed without much diplomatic subtlety. Walter Kasper rightly
said that the sensation caused by the document betrays a communications
problem, because classical doctrinal language, as used in our document
in continuity with the texts of the Second Vatican Council, is entirely
different from that of newspapers and the media. But then the text
should be interpreted and not held in contempt.

In the discussion of your Congregation's document, the question of
the possibilities and limits of ecumenism was raised once again. The
problems connected with the ecumenical project do not only concern the
existence of a tendency on both sides to tone down what divides and no
longer to take seriously the indispensable demand to prevail. In an
article 15 years ago in Theologische Quartalschrift, you had
already warned against considering "ecumenism as a diplomatic task
of a political kind", and in this sense you criticized the
"ecumenism of negotiation" of the immediate post-conciliar
period. What did you mean?

First of all, I would distinguish between theological dialogue and
political or business negotiations. Theological dialogue is not
concerned with finding what is acceptable and eventually suitable to
both parties, but with discovering profound convergences behind the
different linguistic forms and with learning to distinguish what is
connected to a specific historical period from what instead is
fundamental. This is possible particularly when the context of the
experience of God and Self has changed, when the language can thus be
confronted with a certain detachment and fundamental insights can flow
from passions that divide.

Can you give an example of this?

It is obvious in the doctrine of justification: Luther's religious
experience was essentially conditioned by the difficult aspect of God's
wrath and a desire for the certainty of forgiveness and salvation.
However, the experience of God's wrath has been completely lost in our
era, and the idea that God cannot damn anyone has become widespread
among Christians. In a now very different context, they were able to
seek points that the two sides have in common, starting from the Bible,
which is the foundation we share. I can find no contradiction, then,
between Dominus Iesus, which only repeats the central ideas of
the Council, and the consensus on justification. It is important that
dialogue be conducted with great patience, with great respect and,
especially, with total honesty. The challenge posed to us all by
agnosticism consists in abandoning historical preconceptions and going
to the heart of the matter. For example, to go back to a previous point
in our conversation, honesty means not applying the same concept of
Church to the Catholic Church and to one of the Churches formed
according to the borders of former principalities.

So then, after the publication of your document is the ecumenical
formula of "reconciled diversity" still valid?

I accept the concept of a "reconciled diversity", if it
does not mean equality of content and the elimination of the question of
truth so that we could consider ourselves one, even if we believe and
teach different things. To my mind this concept is used well, if it says
that, despite our differences, which do not allow us to regard ourselves
as mere fragments of a Church of Jesus Christ that does not exist in
reality, we meet in the peace of Christ and are reconciled to one
another, that is, we recognize our division as contradicting the Lord's
will and this sorrow spurs us to seek unity and to pray to him in the
knowledge that we all need his love.

Occasionally one reads passages from the Pope and his collaborators
which relativize the division of Christianity in a dialectical treatment
of salvation history. The Pope then speaks of "a metahistorical
reason" for the division and, in his book Crossing the Threshold
of Hope, he wonders: "Could it not be that these divisions have
also been a path continually leading the Church to discover the
untold wealth contained in Christ's Gospel and in the redemption
accomplished by Christ? Perhaps all this wealth would not have come
to light otherwise". Thus the division of Christians seems a
pedagogical work of the Holy Spirit, since, as the Pope says, for human
knowledge and human action a "certain dialectic" is
also significant. You yourself wrote: "Even if the divisions are
human works and human sins, a dimension proper to the divine framework
exists in them". If this is so, one wonders by what right can the
divine pedagogy be opposed by identifying the Church of Christ with the
Roman Catholic Church. Are not the conceptual imprecisions deplored in
the ecumenical dialogue also found in the speculations of salvation
history on God's pedagogy?

This is a difficult subject which concerns human freedom and divine
governance. There are no valid answers in an absolute form because we
cannot go beyond our human horizon, and therefore we cannot unveil the
mystery that links these two elements. What you have quoted from the
Holy Father and from me could be roughly applied to the well-known
saying that God writes straight with crooked lines. The lines remain
crooked and this means that the divisions have to deal with human sin.
Sin does not become something positive because it can lead to a growth
process when it is understood as something to be overcome by conversion
and to be removed by forgiveness.

Paul already had to explain to the Romans the ambiguity stemming from
his teaching on grace, according to which, since sin leads to grace,
then one could be at ease with sin (Rom 6:19). God's ability to turn
even our sins into something good certainly does not mean that sin is
good. And the fact that God can make division yield positive fruits does
not make it positive in itself. The conceptual imprecisions which do in
fact exist are due to the disturbing unfathomableness of the
relationship between the freedom to sin and the freedom of grace. The
freedom of grace is also shown by the fact that, on the one hand, the
Church does not sink and break up into antithetical ecclesial fragments
in an unrealizable dream. By God's grace the Church as subject really
exists and subsists in the Catholic Church; Christ's promise is the
guarantee that this subject will never be destroyed. But on the other
hand, it is true that this subject is wounded, inasmuch as ecclesial
realities exist and function outside it. In that fact the tragedy of sin
and the paradoxical breadth of God's promise most clearly emerge. If
this tension is removed to reach clear formulas, and it is said that all
ecclesial communities are the Church, and that all, despite their
disagreements, are that one and holy Church, then no ecumenism exists,
because there is no longer any reason for seeking authentic unity,

The same question can be asked again from another angle: whether the
question of religious profession is related to that of personal
salvation. Why mission, why the disagreement over "truth" and
Vatican documents if, in the end, man can reach God by all paths?

The document is far from repeating the subjectivist and relativist
thesis that everyone can become holy in his own way. This is a cynical
interpretation, in which I sense a contempt for the question of truth
and right ethics. The document affirms, with the Council, that God gives
light to everyone. Those who seek the truth find themselves objectively
on the path that leads to Christ, and thus also on the path to the
community in which he remains present in history, that is, to the
Church. To seek the truth, to listen to one's conscience, to purify
one's interior hearing, these are the conditions of salvation for all.
They have a profound, objective connection with Christ and the Church.
In this sense we say that other religions have rites and prayers which
can play a role of preparing for the Gospel, of occasions or pedagogical
helps in which the human heart is prompted to open itself to God's
action. But we also say that this does not apply to all rites. For there
are some (anyone who knows something of the history of religions can
only agree) which turn man away from the light. Thus vigilance and inner
purification are achieved by a life that follows conscience and helps to
identify differences, an openness which, in the end, means belonging
inwardly to Christ.

For this reason the document can affirm that mission remains
important, since it offers the light that men and women need in their
search for truth and goodness.

But the question remains: since, as you have said, salvation can be
achieved through every path, provided that one lives according to one's
conscience, does mission then not lose its theological urgency? For what
else can be meant by the thesis of the "Intimate and objective
connection" between non-Catholic paths of salvation and Christ, if
not that Christ himself makes superfluous the distinction between a
"full" and "deficient" truth of salvation, since, if
he is present as the instrument of salvation, he is always and logically
"fully" present.

I did not say that salvation can be achieved by every path. The way
of conscience, the keeping of one's gaze focused on truth and the
objective good, is one single way, although it can take many forms
because of the great number of individuals and situations. The good is
one, however, and truth does not contradict itself. The fact that man
does not attain one or the other does not relativize the requirement of
truth and goodness. For this reason it is not enough to continue in the
religion one has inherited, but one must remain attentive to the true
good and thus be able to transcend the limits of one's own religion.
This has meaning only if truth and goodness really exist. It would be
impossible to walk the way of Christ if he did not exist. Living with
the eyes of the heart open, purifying oneself inwardly and seeking the
light are indispensable conditions of human salvation. Proclaiming the
truth, that is, making the light shine (not putting it "under a
bushel, but on a stand"), is absolutely necessary.

It is not the concept of Church that irritates Protestants, but the
biblical interpretation of Dominus Iesus, which says that it is
necessary to oppose "the tendency to read and to interpret Sacred
Scripture outside the Tradition of the Church's Magisterium" and
"presuppositions ... which hinder the understanding and acceptance
of the revealed truth". Jüngel says: "The inappropriate
revaluation of the authority of the Church's Magisterium corresponds to
an equally inappropriate devaluation of the authority of Sacred
Scripture".

Fortified by 500 years of experience, modern exegesis has clearly
recognized, along with modern literature and the philosophy of language,
that mere self-interpretation of the Scriptures and the clarity
resulting from it do not exist. In 1928 Adolf von Harnack said, with
typical bluntness, in his correspondence with Erik Peterson that
"the so-called 'formal principle' of old Lutheranism is a critical
impossibility; on the contrary, the Catholic one is better". Ernst
Käsemann has shown that the canon of Sacred Scripture as such does not
ground the Church's unity, but the multiplicity of confessions.
Recently, one of the most important Evangelical exegetes, Ulrich Luz,
has shown that "Scripture alone" opens the way to every
possible interpretation. Lastly, the first generation of the Reformation
also had to seek "the centre of Scripture", to obtain an
interpretive key which could not be extrapolated from the text as such.
Another practical example: in the clash with Gerd Lüdemann, a professor
who denied the resurrection and divinity of Christ, etc., it has been
pointed out that the Evangelical Church cannot do without a sort of
Magisterium. When the contours of the faith are blurred in a chorus of
opposing exegetical efforts (materialist, feminist, liberationist
exegeses, etc.), it seems evident that it is precisely the relationship
with the professions of faith, and thus with the Church's living
tradition, that guarantees the literal interpretation of Sacred
Scripture, protecting it from subjectivism and preserving its
originality and authenticity. Therefore the Magisterium does not
diminish the authority of Sacred Scripture but safeguards it by taking
an inferior position to it and allowing the faith flowing from it to
emerge.

The Declaration of your Congregation indicates the acceptance of
"apostolic succession" as a decisive criterion for the
definition of a "Sister Church" by the Roman Catholic Church.
A Protestant like Jüngel rejects this principle as non-biblical. For
him, the successor of the Apostles is not the Bishop but the biblical
canon. In his opinion, any person who lives according to the Scriptures
is a successor of the Apostles.

The assertion that the canon is the successor of the Apostles is an
exaggeration and mixes up things that are too different. The canon of
Scripture was arrived at by the Church in a process that continued into
the fifth century. The canon, then, does not exist without the ministry
of the successors of the Apostles and, at the same time, establishes the
criterion of their service. The written word is not a substitute for
living witnesses, just as the latter cannot replace the written word.
Living witnesses and the written word refer to one another. We share the
episcopal structure of the Church as the way to be in communion with the
Apostles, with the whole ancient Church and with the Orthodox Churches;
this should give cause for reflection. When it is asserted that someone
who lives according to the Scriptures is a successor of the Apostles,
the following question is left unanswered: who decides what it means to
live according to the Scriptures and who judges whether someone is
really doing so? The thesis that the successor of the Apostles is not
the Bishop but the biblical canon is a clear rejection of the Catholic
Church's concept. At the same time, however, we are expected to use this
same concept to define the Churches of the Reformation. It is a logic
that I frankly do not understand.